Semiconductor chips have become highly integrated with recent technological developments. Generally, a manufactured semiconductor chip is subjected to an electrical inspection before being packaged, and properly functioning products are packaged according to the inspection results and defective products are discarded. When performing the electrical inspection, a probe card that electrically connects between a tester having a measurement device provided therein and a pad of the semiconductor chip has been used.
The probe attached to and used with the probe card may be largely classified into a cantilever-type probe, a membrane-type probe, a vertical-type probe, etc. In order to overcome the height difference between pads, these probes should have a structure that is capable of absorbing vertical displacement while having a structure that is capable of scrubbing to remove a native oxide present on an electrode surface.
In addition, the probes should have characteristics of low contact resistance in order to smoothly conduct current when the probe contacts the semiconductor chip while having the above-mentioned structures.
A probe used for a probe card mechanically contacts the electrical pad of the device to be inspected, and the contact resistance between the probe and the pad should be small. The contact resistance has been affected by the characteristics at a contact surface when the probe contacts the pad. Generally, in the case of an aluminum pad that has been frequently used, even though the surface of the aluminum pad is cleaned to remove foreign materials, the characteristics of the contact resistance are not good due to the native oxide. Therefore, in order to improve the characteristics of the contact resistance, the contact resistance of the probe according to the related art is sufficiently lowered when the native oxide is removed. In addition, in order to accurately analyze the characteristics of the chip to be measured, good high frequency characteristics should be implemented.
In the related art, in order to improve the characteristics of the probe, the probe is manufactured by a method of mixing carbon nanotubes as one of various materials for manufacturing the probe, a method of burying a conductive material made of conductive diamond or a nanoscale metal in a tip of the probe, etc.
However, the methods according to the related art use an excessively large amount of inexpensive carbon nanotubes in order to sufficiently satisfy the characteristics of the probe, or it is difficult to manufacture the probe.